


Things Left Behind

by DarthSuki



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Brothels, DFAB reader, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Eventual shameless filthy smut, F/M, Fluff, Japanese Culture, Language Barrier, Lost in an Unfamiliar Country, M/M, POV First Person, Reader-Insert, prepare your asses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7399909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing I remember was waking up in an alley. It was dark. Unfamiliar. Terrifying. But the more terrifying thing wasn't the place in which I woke up, but the fact that I didn't even know who I was, not even my first name.</p><p>[This is an AU where Hanzo and Genji own and work at a brothel/pleasure den and the reader wakes up in a dark alley, having no memory of who they are or how they got there. After the confusion due to the reader being mistaken to be a customer, the brothers decide to help, letting the reader stay with Hanzo while you try to piece your broken memory back together.]</p><p>Rating WILL go up in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Needing "Help"

**Author's Note:**

> ALRIGHT SO A LITTLE EXPLANATION THAT MAY HELP YOU UNDERSTAND: This fic is written in first person for a number of reasons. The first reason I'll be shameless about: it started as a self insert. However, I decided in the end to make it open to anyone who wanted to read it, and was greatly inspired by [this other Hanzo fic, which was also written in first person.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7024966)
> 
>  
> 
> Though you don't see a lot of first person pov fanfiction, I feel like it's just as friendly for the reader-insert genre if not more than the more commonly used second person pov. There's a lot more linguistic wiggle room (you can use 5 words to reference the reader with 1st Person than 2 for 2nd Person), and it seems to fit a lot better for this plot than I thought second person did. Regardless, please let me know what you think of the choice!
> 
> Please note that there will be HEAVY USAGE OF JAPANESE in this fic, most of which isn't meant to be understood (which I why I included no translations). I heavily relied on google translate for a lot of it and though I double checked the translation back and forth FEEL FREE TO CORRECT ME PLEASE. The entire premise of this fic is to be 'lost in another country whose language you can't understand and relying solely on someone who also can't understand you', but I want to hold some credibility in my usage of the language itself as well!

The first thing I remember was waking up in an alley.

It was dark. Unfamiliar. Terrifying. 

I could faintly smell rotting food from a dumpster across from where I awoke. The heavy, sharp scent of fish and fruit forced away the thick haze from my mind, throwing me into a sense of panic and alert when I realized where I was.

My eyes opened suddenly just as a gasp pulled breath from my lips. It was like waking up from a nightmare in the dead of night, being so overloaded with fear and confusion that all I could remember to do at first was turn my eyes left and right, taking in my surroundings like a frozen doll laying limp on the ground.

It was a fairly narrow alleyway, and the majority of the space lay inside a blanket of shadows--at first, it was hard to even tell if it was day or night.

The sensation of cold cement against my back was at first the only thing I could process. It lingered into my bones, as if there was not an ounce of warmth left in my body. 

How long had I been there? How had I gotten there?

Who...was I?

I wasn’t sure which was more alarming: the fact that I asked the question, or the fact that I had no actual answer.

None.

It was as if I suddenly came into existence, no memories to flick through, no sense of self to fall on.

The only reply I got from such philosophical questions came in the form of a sharp, icy chill against my back, and the slow realization of the bright blue sky far above my face, peeking between the tops of the two buildings that made up the alley itself.

It took a long time--I’m not sure how long--before I finally had the sense and energy to sit myself up.

A sudden pain echoed down my spine at the movement. I cringed, still dazed and in a fog, trying to figure out too many things in the span of only a few seconds. My head pounded, hard, as if a thick wave of thoughts were all trying to force themselves at the forefront of my attention all at once, and I hadn’t the answers to quell any of them.

No name. No recollection. Nothing. It was as if I had been born as an adult right then and there with nearly nothing to back me up. I knew that the capital of Georgia was Atlanta, that birds flew south for the winter, that mathematics in high school would always be one of the few hells on earth. I seemed to know practical things, facts and the like, but none of them carried much personal information alongside.

I glanced to the ground beside me when something caught my eyes. It took a moment, but I realized that it was a pair of glasses, the lenses reflecting some light, ever so slightly that they were otherwise easy to miss. They looked awkwardly bent, like someone had sat on them (and it had probably been myself), but I put them on without a thought against it. 

It made sense that they would be mine, right?

They sat on my nose at an odd angle, slightly bent down on one side, but I was nevertheless able to see through them without issue. It helped to dull the headache stabbing at my brain after a few moments, just a tinge now that my eyes didn’t have to strain as much. I hadn’t even realized my eyes were straining so much until I put the glasses on, so that was one fact I learned about myself: I wore glasses.

I got to my feet eventually, legs wobbly and head barely any better. The world spun with every shift of my body, but the wall beside me offered some sense of balance where I myself had little. The brick was just as chilly as the cement against my palm, but I was happy just to be on my feet again. Upright. Able to think a little easier. My head didn’t swim as much in a thick, syrupy haze.

Thinking didn’t help all that much, as it offered only more questions than answers. As I had already observantly noted, I was in a narrow alleyway. Down one side was a dead-end, leading onto another wall, blocked off and vandalized with various layers of spray paint. 

The symbols were as incomprehensible as the writing itself. Letters I didn’t understand and words I couldn’t read. 

Was this also part of my amnesia? Had I somehow forgotten to read and write alongside of my personal memories? I couldn’t be sure, but upon a few seconds of careful inspection and a painful, focused digging in my brain, I finally realized what language it was.

Japanese. 

Now, whether or not I was supposed to know what was written on the wall was a completely different story, but at least it gave be a basic idea of where I might be. 

My eyes glanced down the alley, following the adjacent wall until I peered out towards the mouth, open end leading into a main road. Sunlight lay just past where the hard line of shadow ended, the darkness of the alley giving way to what seemed to be a semi-busy street. 

Every minute or two a car passed by, and it was a reminder that there was a world outside of the alley itself and, eventually, I’d have to leave it. I could see a few small shops on the other side of the street, with most of their displays cut off by the narrow view the walls of the alley’s mouth allowed.

There was more Japanese writing, its meaning foreign to me, but otherwise clueing in that they were probably shops of some sort, though it was hard to figure out what they sold (not that it really mattered). Maybe they’d be able to help? 

Surely there would be some person with a kind heart who’d help me, maybe even someone I could speak with, who could translate for me to someone in authority. However, that plan made me stop for a moment, brain frozen on quite the odd question:

What language did I know?

The question itself seemed absolutely stupid at first, even to me, but for someone who had just woken up with no former memory of themselves (not even their own name), you could surely understand the sense of confusion. I was...thinking, but those were all abstract thoughts and ideas, and I was already confused enough with multitudes on other things to have room for something like that.

I opened my mouth and spoke the first thing that came to mind.

“Who am I?” 

My brain lit up in some slight sense of recognition. English! I could check that off my mental list of questions, and that was...somewhat good, right? Maybe I’d stand a chance to find someone who could speak it, translate a little bit for me to at least find a place to figure myself out. Who I was. Where I came from.

Why the hell I woke up in a fucking alley. 

There was definitely some importance to that little detail there, since I could have woken up absolutely anywhere else and I wouldn’t have been half as confusing and terrifying. Though the possibilities that erupted into my thoughts were...far less than pleasant. I didn’t dwell on them for a fair many seconds.

I stepped towards the open end of the alley, legs slowly gaining strength to hold up my own weight. When I neared the edge of the shadows, a thought ran through my mind:

What was I going to do after I step out from this alley?

It was a smart question, one that anyone with a sense of logic might ask themselves in that particular situation. What sort of answer did I have for it though? I had no cell phone, no vehicle, I didn’t speak the native language in which I woke up, and of course the most important bit of all?

I couldn’t even remember who I was. 

Definitely should make sure to include that in my plan of action. 

It meant that I didn’t have a name to give someone, a phone number to call to family, friends, or even a hotel that I might have been staying at, if under the assumption that I was just a tourist. No personal information whatsoever. 

There were a million possibilities and each one seemed more ludicrous than the last, but I had no time to consider them all. The more time I spent standing there, paralyzed with confusion and fear, the less time I had to figure out what was going on.

A hospital. A police station. Either one was bound to have someone who spoke English, and were probably the most equipped to handle my...situation? Well, if anyone was going to handle a lost, random, completely foreign person who had amnesia, one of them had to be it.

I stepped out of the shadows as confidently as I could. My legs didn’t wobble nearly as much anymore as my stride started to take me down one side of the street. Just one step after another, I told myself. Just keep walking and find someplace that looks like it would have a phone or, at least, a place that had english advertised somewhere. There was a universal symbol or something for a hospital right?

That was much easier said than done.

The street wasn’t all that busy, though what few people on the same side of the road as I gave me short glances as I walked past them. Cars passed beside me every minute or so, a whiz of noise that reminded me time and again of where I was, in the middle of some small Japanese town that I knew nothing about.

Now, how about a sign? A literal one of course--it wouldn’t be hard to follow one if it simply had a red cross logo on it to follow, the symbol feeling somewhat familiar enough.

There were stores along the street--some big, some small, some even plastered in signs full of foreign symbols and characters I had no chance of understanding. A couple even had large pictures or huge windows to showcase the wares inside.

My eyes glanced from store to store, and my stomach only knotted up more with each building that I past by, hope dropping for my sense of safety. I shoved that thought as far out of my thoughts as I could the moment it started crawling up my back, and with a confident breath, I pushed on down the street. Knowing that somewhere there had to be help. 

Somewhere there had to be a police station, just like somewhere there had to be a hospital. An embassy? What other places would speak assured English….? 

One building in particular caught my attention only slightly more than the rest, but not for the reasons I wanted. In light of all the colorful advertisements and inviting decorum that would have otherwise pulled someone inside the shop itself, I found myself merely intrigued by the giant glass windows. They covered a large portion of the front of the building. They were a bit more reflective than all the other stores, hence why I bothered to stop in the first place.

I had been in so much of a chaotic mess of thoughts, it hadn’t yet occurred to me to find out what I looked like; maybe it would even hold a key to figuring out who I was. When the realization managed to sift through my other, larger worries, I retraced my steps and came back to the window again.

I stepped closer to the glass and finally saw myself.

Normal. 

I just looked...normal, or as normal as my brain seemed to consider so. Nothing jumped out as crazy or overly dirty, as if I really had just woken up next to a dumpster. No hair sticking out, no huge rips or smears of dirt on my clothes.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

I turned to face forward again just to let my eyes glance over my reflection, as if even one detail might be of some legitimate usefulness outside of mere curiosity.

My hair looked kept, my skin seemed a little roughed up but without scars, and my eyes...they were the oddest part of everything. It was strange to stare at your own reflection and let the realization sink in that you were looking at yourself, but when the reflection was someone you had never once seen in your life before that moment, however….

It was eerie. 

Seeing myself did help to some degree though. It sated some deep-seated curiosity inside my mind, that sense of ‘self’ that could keep you anchored to solid, logical thought. I wasn’t just a grey blob of a figure in my own mind anymore, which I supposed was a step in the right direction, at least for my morale.

After I finished looking over myself I resumed my path down the sidewalk, more conscious of the state of myself and what I looked like. It only pushed my thoughts harder still, almost edging on panic at that point. I hadn’t seen anything that looked like an official government building, and not a sign to speak of for a hospital or police station. 

The panic continued to gnaw at the bottom of my belly and thoughts for several long moments as I stood in the center of the sidewalk. It was hard to get much movement in my brain when all it wanted to do was panic, to crawl back into a dark corner and not accept that I was lost, alone, and at the mercy of whoever I could find first that at least understood some of what I needed to stay.

And then I heard it. A sound, a voice? It was familiar, not the voice so much as the language. 

I heard English. Or at least, I was pretty sure it was English.

It was just a muffled, barely audible voice that ended on a loud near-drunken laughter, but I could hear familiar hard consonants, the dip in vowels that would almost sound annoying it I wasn’t so desperate to hear it. It sounded close enough to the language that I knew instinctively that it did plenty well at the very least to catch my attention.

With a quickness that might come off as fear or surprise, I turned my eyes towards the source.

It was tucked back a small ways, as if the building itself was hiding in it’s own little alcove, which explained why I didn’t notice it at first. If I hadn’t heard something to catch my attention directly to it, the building would have been passed over completely.

I stepped closer, mentally noting its size but lack of...anything. There were no advertisements, no signs, nothing to communicate what sort of store it even was in the first place. Though it didn’t look abandoned, it was greatly difficult to tell what it was even there for. I quickly assumed that, if I could read Japanese, the sign above the open doorway might actually have helped a bit.

悦楽の島田家屋

It looked...sophisticated, that was the only word that came to mind that felt like a proper description. Fancy, maybe, in a sort of minimalistic way, like a five-star restaurant in the heart of New York or something.

I figured that the risk was low enough to take a chance and check it out. Even if I found nothing worth lingering over, I could just leave keep searching--hell, maybe someone in there could point me in the right direction if they at least knew enough English for ‘hospital’ or ‘police’ or…..something.

I walked towards and into the building without a second thought.

The first thing that met my eyes was a hallway. Though the atmosphere was lazy and as low as the lights themselves were dimmed, I didn’t feel a distinct sense of fear about it. I could hear a low hum of noise just further down the hallway, towards a main room.

When I reached the end of the hallway, what I saw reminded me much of a lounge.

The main area lay in the center of the room, directly in front of me. It was nothing more than a dip in the floor, a lowered section lined with soft-looking couches and a small table in the very center. There were a few pairs of people on the couches, each tending to themselves in conversation and all of them in various manners of business dress, but I narrowed my eyes for a moment as the vision struck a small point of confusion in my thoughts.

That was perhaps the oddest thing--while one partner looked about ready to step into a meeting, the other looked casual, wearing little more than a light, summery kimono as far as I could see. It didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman on either end of the pair, the pattern was the same for each.

Something about it struck me as odd, but a giggle from a specific couple pulled my attention away from the confusion.

A pair of women sat closest to where I stood awkwardly near the front hallway, my eyes lingering almost too-closely on how they spoke with one another. One woman was in a dark business suit, and the other in a too-soft flowery blue kimono, her hair lightly pulled back and her face bright with a smile. Her lips moved, but she spoke too softly for me to hear. 

After a moment, the woman took her partners hand, carefully, and guided her out of the couch area and towards the back of the lounge. I merely watched them, curious to where they were going. I didn’t follow them, but watched as the pair disappeared behind a silken cloth-covered entrance into another room. The entrance itself was sly and hidden, cloth the same shade of black as the walls were, so it took a moment even after they stepped inside for me to even see the slight break in the cover over the entrance where both halfs met in the center.

Huh.

Just before my eyes shifted away, I noticed that a new pair of people emerged from the same cloth-covered doorway. It was a man and a woman this time, the man being in the kimono while the woman looked….off.

Sure, she wore an outfit that looked far more casual than a buisness suit, but it wasn’t what caught my curiosity. Her clothes looked rumbled, as if she had put them on out of a pile and put them back on again. Her hair was in a hasty-looking, dark bun she could have hardly spent more than a minute on without even looking in a mirror.

I stared for a few seconds, mind trying to put together puzzle pieces that didn’t even seem to fit before I felt something. My gaze shifted, and for the briefest of seconds, my eyes met with the man she stood with, his gaze burrowing into me as if I was intruding on something very, very intimate.

I averted my eyes quickly, unsure of what I just saw, but feeling nonetheless unsettled by the look the man had given me. It made me feel even more out of place, as if I was doing something inherently wrong without even knowing it.

 

I turned my attentions to wandering around in hopes not to gain more attention, trying to act somewhat as if I knew where I was and what I was doing despite the fact that I completely, wholly didn’t.

As the main hallway had been, the entire area was visibly dim. Decor mostly consisted of simple items--plants, paintings, such and so forth. Not what I would call a shop, and definitely not that I would call a club. 

There was a bar to one side of me, evidently stocked with a variety of alcoholic brands that I couldn’t identify. It could seat a fair number of people, though there was nobody tending to it, nor patrons sitting at the countertop. There was a bell and, honestly, I considered ringing it simply to see if someone would approach. The courage needed was a bit more than what I could muster, and simply turned my eyes to the other side of the room. 

More couches, tables, pairs of people talking between one another, never mingling in more than a pair. Though I was very much confused with whatever sort of building it was, I had no time, ability, or overwhelming curiosity to find out. 

I decided that it was better just to leave, to find another place that I could find help with.

Just as I turned to make my way out, I walked right into someone who had been standing just a few steps behind me. Though the collision into their chest knocked me off balance, a firm hand held my arm, keeping me from falling on my ass as I tried to quickly collect my thoughts.

“I’m sorry, sorry,” I said instantly, a reactionary apology for something that may or may not even have been my fault in the first place. After taking a few steps back, I raise my hands, palms facing out in a wordless attempt to communicate my lack of intention to run literally right into whoever it was. But it wasn’t until that point that I raised my eyes to see exactly who I had run into and--

I froze when my eyes met with a fierce, icy gaze. 

“I--” The sound fell from my lips as I tried to regain my stature, and I stepped back again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you sir.” 

A man, unmoved himself despite my lack of coordination, stood before me. His arms were crossed over his chest, eyes peering down as if he had been waiting for me to realize he was standing there for--well, however long he had been watching me flounder while I had been so sure to be inconspicuous. 

He stood at least a head taller than myself and, like all of the other people who I had assumed to be workers of the building, wore a loose, casual kimono-like outfit that hung around his form. His hair was long and tied back in a ponytail, but a stray, dark lock loosely framed his face on one side. The man had an intimidating aura about him, which wasn’t helped at all by the thick, but well-kept beard over his jaw and the sharpness of his dark, brown eyes.

After less than a few seconds of taking the sight in, the man’s expression softened and his arms uncrossed, falling to his sides. 

“ようこそ,” He purred lowly. “あなたは失われていますか?”

I blinked, stared at him, then carefully glanced to one side and the other of me to make sure he wasn’t...talking to anyone else. 

“Eh,” I hadn’t a clue what he had even said, but it was becoming almost painfully clear that he was speaking to me. “H-hello? I don’t...I don’t understand you, sir.” It was better to be blunt than to try and act otherwise. “I need help, if...if you understand English. Help. I need help.”

The man stared at me for a moment as his expression shifted from warmth to confusion, and then back again, as if taking in my words. It caused a flicker of excitement in me. Would he be able to understand?

“Help?” He finally asked in heavily accented English, and I nodded fervently. He thought for a moment before continuing on. “I can help you.” Though the words offered some comfort, I didn’t understand why he smiled so warmly, as if there was a joke that I wasn’t in the loop for, a subtle humor on the words.

After a moment, he pointed to himself.

“Hanzo,” He said, voice soft, lips pulled in a too-charming smile. It wasn’t creepy or offsetting, but I couldn’t pay all that much attention to what lay beneath the expression when he tilted his head and turned his pointing finger to me. “あなたは? Name?” 

I froze, then fumbled for a response. 

“I don’t know,” I said, shoulders shrugging, an answer of honesty. The response I got in his eyes was slow, but progressive confusion.

“Idano?” He repeated. It took me a couple seconds to realize that he assumed the words had been my answer, and I quickly shook my head in the growing chaos of the situation between the two of us. “...あれは本当に奇妙な名前です.”

“No! That’s not it,” I said, hands up and almost attempting to wave off the question that I honestly had no answer to. Maybe it would be easier if I just made one up, honestly, just to give him something to use until I was able to figure things out. 

I said the first name that came to mind. It wasn’t too short, but not too long; not too simple, but yet not too complex. Hanzo rolled it over his tongue a time or two before he hummed, bringing a hand up to his bearded jaw as if he had to contemplate my answer, but his eyes never turned away from me. 

The situation grew a little too awkward, standing there in silence, so I decided to spur the conversation forward. He had said he could help me, he seemed to understand that much.

“Listen, uh, Hanzo, I don’t know if you can understand me completely, but I need help. I’m lost, and I don’t have any money or identification or--” 

I didn’t get a chance to continue with my confused rambling before I felt a sudden, yet soft press of fingertips and palm over my cheek. The touched froze my lips, kept a sound from falling out of my mouth while his expression fell to me softly.

“はじめて の かたです か?” he whispered in highlighted question, voice almost a purr. “私は前にあなたの顔を見ていません.”

Seeing that I didn’t understand him (still) and that I didn’t know how to explain that I woke up literally not knowing my own name, I froze. I stood in still silence as his thumb rubbed over my cheek bone. I didn’t understand how the conversation thus far spurred such an oddly intimate gesture from a complete stranger.

“Uh...no?”

The answer, whether it was accidental honesty or not, seemed to delight him. He rubbed the calloused pad of his thumb over my cheek for a moment more before his hand dropped, and he offered it for me to take.

“I will help you,” He said in slightly broken English, expression soft and rather inviting despite my disposition up until then. I glance cautiously at Hanzo for a moment, then two, unsure if my sense of helplessness had worked through the language barrier or not. 

My caution must have been somewhat evident, because he carefully reached forward, gently grabbed my hand, and held it between us so that my hand lay in his palm. He caressed the fingers of his other hands over the back of my own, as if trying to sooth my hesitation. 

“私はあなたがリラックスするのに役立ちます,” the man said said gently. I couldn’t be sure what the hell it was, but the tone seemed soft enough that I didn’t pull my hand back.

Taking this as whatever permission he needed to, carefully tugging me as the two of us stepped across the room, towards the back where I had seen the hidden door to another part of the building. I felt...confused, unsure what back there had anything to do with helping me, but I wordlessly kept in step.

He pulled the curtains back and gently ushered me inside, and I did so with an increasing sense of caution at the situation. The only things that stayed my tongue from bringing up another question were simple: I had already established that neither of us could understand one another properly, and I had already seemed to get across the fact that I needed help. 

He had even said it, confirmed it.

I felt just a hair too shy to bring up another question, too unsure of myself to make my situation a hundred times more embarrassing than it already was--I didn’t need to bring attention to myself, no more than I absolutely needed to, which was already very little.

Hanzo led me down the hall that the door led too--it was a much wider hall than the initial one leading into the building had been, and just a tad brighter. It felt almost like a maze, walking silently as he ushered us to turn one way, then the other, stepping down a hall lined with sliding doors and tatami mats.

As we were about to turn into an open door, I heard a noise from down the hall. It was faint, and took but a moment for it to register in my mind, but it was a moan.

A moan. It didn’t sound like they were in pain, either, which started to freak me out just a little bit as my brain gathered the noise and tossed it in with the other oddities about the building that I had come to observe.

Hanzo’s hands pressed against my shoulders, not so much calming my growing caution as it simply kept me from backing out of the room completely.

“恥ずかしがらないでください、小さな一,” He whispered, my body flinching when I felt his lips beside my ear, his warm breath against my neck. “あなたはそのすぐに十分のようにうめき声されます.”

Jesus fuck. I could feel bright-red warning flags start going off inside my head, but with the man standing right behind me, pressing me forward, all I could do was step inside of the room. The door quickly shut behind us and I, half-frozen while my brain finally put the pieces together, stared into the room.

It was simple. Like the hall outside, the floor was covered in tatami mats, the walls soft-colored and mostly bare. There was a television in one corner, a soft pile of pillows in front of it, and in the center of the room…

….was a bed. 

Just a bed, a soft mat on the floor covered by a thick comforter and pillows and ohmygod. Realization poured through my thoughts when everything finally, finally came together, and what had seemed like a bunch of confusing little details became something glaringly obvious. 

The building that I had walked into was a brothel.

Fresh, new panic laced through me as the red alarm sounded off, but a body pressed behind me before I could turn around and hastily make my way out of the room and building. It didn’t take all that much guessing to realize who it was.

“Hanzo,” I started, voice a bit of a whimper as the panic leaked from my thoughts. “I think you misunderstood me, please, I--” Obviously there had been a severe miscommunication between the two of us, mistook my plea for ‘help’ as something far different than what I meant. It explained the smiles, the looks, the purr of his voice as we brokenly tried to speak to one another--

He whispered my name in an attempt to shush me, and my heart hammered even harder. Fuck. My tone of voice could have been taken as a whimper of need than a whimper of caution, only apparent when I felt his hands reach and press down on either side of my hips. 

“あなたは既にこのために憧れるのですか?” The man purred, lips against the shell of my ear and fingertips brushing up my sides. His lips came dangerously close to the nape of my neck, breath warm and hot, as those same digits started to work forward, towards the front of my body to start removing my pants. “とても恥ずかしがり屋である誰かのために、私はあなたが処女であることを前提としています.”

When he pressed his body closer, possibly to get a better leverage of his arms around me, I could tell from the heat that he was, at least, already shirtless. 

A shriek curdled through the air.

The next ten or so minutes was nothing but a whirlpool of confusion, a flurry of broken English and Japanese that took no level of knowledge to understand that it was equally shocked and concerned. At the end of it, I was sitting on the bed in the center of the room, knees up against my body and arms wrapped around them, staring down at the floor while Hanzo spoke to someone who had burst into the room mere moments after my initial shriek. He had looked initially like Hanzo had when I saw his face--confused, concerned, and completely surprised.

They started conversing almost instantly in rapid, completely unintelligible words. I heard my name a couple times, woven in the graceful Japanese, but wasn’t sure what to think of it. 

What kind of trouble had I gotten myself in? Was I in debt or something now because I made him think I was a customer? Did the other man--who I at first thought was his boss, despite him looking years younger--think that he had been trying to rape me?

Confusion and questions were never ending, as if I actually needed more of them on top of the issue that had brought me into that building in the first place. 

As their rapid speaking finally started to die down, I groaned, pressing my forehead against the top of my knees. Like a spiral, my problems were only growing worse by the minute. 

“...彼女は日本語知りません,” I heard one voice rumble deep, probably Hanzo’s, though I didn’t bother to look up. “彼女は助けを必要彼女はと教えてくれました, 私は彼女を誤解しました.”

A groan lingered through the air that wasn’t my own. As I turned my eyes up to see the two men, maybe get an idea where the conversation was heading by the expressions on their faces, I saw the more unfamiliar one step towards me. He knelt down in front of me, keeping a fair, polite distance between us as he spoke.

“My name is Genji,” he said, carefully, his words just as heavily accented as Hanzo’s were. “I speak little English, but I will help you.” He paused, then glanced to the man behind him, who merely crossed his arms and glanced away. “...Help help. Hanzo knows little English. Very little.” 

Genji was, thank god, a lot more helpful than Hanzo was. He spoke with a careful, almost cautious hesitation to his voice with every question, as if making sure that he was asking the right thing each time. He constantly asked for clarification on something or another, which did plenty to calm my nerves.

His face was softer than Hanzo’s, younger and less intimidating. His eyes looked liked bright eyes of a child even when he spoke so solemnly. He wore much the same as the other man did, though his loose silken outfit was a bright, gentle green, with stylized dragons covering much of the fabric, and it matched his eyes in an almost beautiful compliment as they constantly observed me through his questions and my answers. 

The gentleness of Genji was a far nicer contrast than Hanzo had been, even if his intentions had been nothing less than innocent (at least in terms of honesty). It helped to spurr my answers, the entirety of the story that I could give him--there wasn’t all that much to give in the first place, but the young, dark-hared man listened to me carefully regardless.

Through broken conversation and attempted gesturing, I was able to learn and confirm a fair few things:

I actually had walked into a brothel. Hanzo, mistaking my plea for ‘help’, assumed I was a new customer and wasn’t sure how to approach someone. It was a horrible misunderstanding on all fronts, but the younger man assured me in soft, careful words that I wasn’t in trouble.

“No charge for confusion,” he said, comforting me with his gentle voice. “But you still need help?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, realizing that I could communicate my troubles better with someone who at least seemed to know a little English than none at all--at least enough that we were able to relatively converse. 

Through some trouble in figuring out how to explain my situation without sounding insane or like an idiot, I continued with a tone of fervent honesty in my words, carefully explaining my situation. No memory, woke up in an unfamiliar place, not even a name to go by. It took some vague gesturing to my head and a lot of doodled question marks traced in the air, but I think he eventually understood me. 

The entire time that I spoke with Genji, Hanzo had kept to himself in the back of the room, sitting and, I can assume, listening to our conversation. Every little while, the younger man turned his head and said something in Japanese, though whether or not he was translating the situation for me, I couldn’t be entirely sure. 

Eventually the conversation came down to what they, as random strangers to me, could do to actually alleviate the situation.The expression on Genji’s face turned solemn for a moment, and he finally sighed. 

“Give one moment, excuse me,” he said, to which I only nodded. He stood up again. I assumed he made some gesture towards the man still sitting on the floor, because when Genji stepped out of the room, Hanzo swiftly followed, saying nothing to me.

The two of them spoke just on the other side of the door while all I could do was listen, left in the linguistic dark about what they were talking about. A couple times in the conversation, one of them raised their voice, just a hair louder, and I almost felt guilty for what would cause the odd tension in the conversation--the feeling was worsened simply by the fact that I didn’t know what they were talking about, how they were going to deal with me. 

The younger man, Genji, had seemed legitimately concerned to help me, but I couldn’t be as sure of the other. He hadn’t been particularly unkind to me as the confusion was worked out, sure, but he had absolutely no obligation to do more than apologize for the miscommunication between us. I couldn’t ask for more than that. 

An agreement seemed to come with relative ease as their voices trailed off a minute or so later. The lack of conversation was what caught my initial attention, their entrance catching the rest of it. I stared as the two men stepped inside of the room, expressions just as they had been when they left; Genji looked concerned but relatively calm, and Hanzo looked rather expressionless, though he didn’t meet my eyes. He stood beside the door, face tinged slightly pink, while the younger man knelt beside me once more to speak.

“You don’t have a place for tonight?” Genji asked, even though he probably already knew the answer. I shook my head, feeling a stone roll in my gut at the acknowledgement that I didn’t even have a roof to turn to when the sun finally fell for the day. But the man’s next words were kind and, as I quickly realized, giving beyond anything I could have asked for as a mere stranger to them. “You are welcome with my brother, Hanzo.” 

I started at him for a moment, blinked in confusion, and glanced to the other man who, apparently, was Genji’s older brother. It would explain the resemblance.

“Welcome with….?” I asked, needing clarification on the wording. Genji seemed to pick up on this quickly enough, waving a hand towards the older, rugged-looking man behind him.

“Welcome with….stay? はい, Stay with him for tonight.” He gestured again, gently, and smiled. “Hanzo has bigger home, I stay with friends. Tomorrow, will make calls, try to help you.” 

There were very few words for what I felt, hearing the man say that. Even though I had only known him for the span of half an hour at most, I couldn’t help but feel almost overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for a simple act of kindness from someone. The comfort that came with knowing there was someone, just someone who understood my situation and was willing to help was almost enough that it brought me to tears. 

Scratch that, it actually did bring me to tears.

I could feel them welling up behind my eyes, bringing both men to a uncomfortable flurry of confusion. Hanzo started asking something in Japanese, and Genji tried to wave him off as he kept his attention on me. 

He said my name, softly, and despite the fact that it had been completely made up on the spot, alongside his hand on my shoulder, it offered a lot of comfort.

I was only able to offer out a sputtered string of grateful thank-you’s and gibberish as he finally started speaking to his brother, hushing him down with laughter--I could only assume the confusion that went through Hanzo’s head when I had suddenly burst into tears. 

“彼女はただ感謝です, 兄,” Genji said, tone light and soft, calming the look of horror that spread over Hanzo’s otherwise calm, well-kept expression. “彼女は泣いていません彼女はあなたのことを怖がっされているので.”

I wiped away the stinging, wet tears as Genji gently ushered me to stand, a hand still on my shoulder. I glanced to Hanzo, and then to his brother, not sure if they were waiting for me to speak but doing so anyway.

I looked to the older man and bowed my head.

“Thank you,” I whispered, unsure what was being said between Genji and myself, but figuring he had to understand at least what had been offered to me on a stranger’s warmth. “I am grateful for your kindness, sir. I’m...sorry about what happened before, for the confusion.” 

A moment passed of silence, Hanzo staring almost stupidly at me before looking towards Genji, who quickly realized what he was being asked and translated (or I at least assumed he did). I couldn’t exactly be sure if he understood and used the same sort of wording as I had. 

Nevertheless, when Genji had finished speaking, Hanzo’s expression shifted, ever so slightly, into a sheepish if not mildly uncomfortable purse of lips. He averted his eyes from my own, mumbling something offhand as he merely waved a hand as if dismissing my words.

“He is grateful,” Genji explained, a giggle to his words. “Doesn’t take thanks or apologies well. He thought you cried because….” He paused, searching for the word. “...scared of him.” 

Oh, well that made some sense. 

They exchanged a few more words between one another before Hanzo made a motion to me that I could only assume was to follow him. 

We left the building rather wordlessly, stopping so Hanzo could speak to a few other workers and I, knowing nothing, merely stood to myself and gazed at the floor. Assumptions could be made that he was explaining the situation because of the gentle, almost sympathetic looks given to me by a few of the people the man spoke to before we left.

The two of us walked down the sidewalk in silence, of course, dotted only by the occasional word that I quickly learned was the full extend of Hanzo’s grasp on the English language. He asked if I was hungry, thirsty, very simple sorts of things. I answered him just as simply--a nod or shake of the head seemed to suffice well enough, leaving the majority of the walking left in silence.

By the time we arrived to his house, I was exhausted in more ways than one. Mentally, physically, emotionally--I was left with nothing but a need to sleep, to let my mind organize all of the confusion and chaos that had happened to me. 

He showed me to a room with a bed, small and simple, but plenty enough to let me fall into the beautiful, dark embrace of sleep. 

Thankfully, Hanzo didn’t try to show me the rest of the house. I hadn’t paid any attention to it when we arrived, eyes merely down to the ground when he had opened the front door. I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep.

“I’m going to sleep,” I told him, pointing into the room, the bed inside. He looked inside, and then back to me. There was a subtle understanding in his dark eyes as he nodded. When I stepped inside of the room, he closed the door for me and left, to do whatever it is a man like him did when he was taking in amnesiatic young girls who he couldn’t even communicate with. 

The last few minutes before I fell unconscious was a bit of a blur I didn’t even recall taking off my clothes, but merely falling into the soft mat on the floor, over the covers, and staring up at the ceiling as emotions finally started to crash into my mind.

Worry. Fear. Hesitation. Desperation. Depression.

Each came with it’s own issues, origin and intensity, plaguing the vision of my wandering thoughts until they were nothing more than a pool of negative outlook for what might befall on me moving forward. The reality of the situation was heavy, ungodly so, like lead weights on my limbs and head. 

But luckily, the need to sleep came quickly, tugging me into the comforting void of thought so I could simply worry about all of those things tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

The air was cool when I woke up. As consciousness started to filter back into my thoughts, it was the first thing that I came to notice, eyes fluttering open as needy hands pulled tighter to the blankets nearest me. Though I could feel a breeze skimming along my face, it wasn’t nippy--just enough of a chill to draw my heavy, warm thoughts out of the darkness that I’d been so comfortably surrounded by. The weight of sleep slowly fell from my thoughts and, in its place, came a growing sense of consciousness and realization.

After what felt like hours of simply laying there, no longer asleep and not feeling entirely awake, I finally opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling above me. Though the cloying promise of warmth and darkness nagged at the back of my eyes, my mind’s pause on thoughts was coming to an end as memories--what little of them there were--began to pour back into place. 

Hanzo. It was the first name that echoed in my head, a reminder that I had more than myself to think about. It was due to a man’s help and good grace that I had even a soft, warm bed to sleep in overnight. 

There was no chance of getting back to sleep now that I was riddled with curiosity and consciousness, so I let out a sigh and shifted onto my feet. A glance around the room yielded no sight of a clock, so my sense of time felt a bit too muddled for my liking--all I remembered was passing out on the mat, so there was no telling how long I had been in such a rock-like, dreamless state of existence. The sun was up, and that seemed reason enough to step out of the room. 

I pushed the thin, sliding paper door aside to the hallway and emerged a lot less exhausted, but no less overwhelmed with my overall situation. 

The layout of the home was a maze, but all I wanted to do was retrace my steps back towards the front, where the entrance led right into an open, connected kitchen and dining room area. It didn’t take too long to find it, weaving through the semi-narrow hallways, passing a few closed doors before finally seeing the very man enveloping my thoughts.

Hanzo didn’t seem to notice me at first, huddled away in the counter-surrounded kitchen area. I could see him working on something behind the counter, eyes hard in their stare down at whatever his hands were busy with. His hair was up in a ponytail, carefully enough that I wondered how long the man had been awake. Just as the day before, he wore a loose, soft-looking, kimono-like outfit. It looked richly colored with dark, subtle fishscale patterns over the material. 

It was a wonder how a man could look so casual and yet so fancy at the same time.

I stepped forward a couple steps more, just past the corner where the hallway ended and the large, open dining-room started. 

That’s when the man finally seemed to notice me. His eyes glanced up from the kitchen, drilling into me for but a moment before realization or recollection kicked in. The gaze softened.

“だからあなたは最終的にを覚ましている,” He said, of course in a language I couldn’t understand, then glanced back down towards the counter. Logic dictated that it was a friendly greeting, so I tried to offer a smile.

“Good morning to you too, Hanzo,” I said, not sure if i was supposed to say anything else. It wasn’t like the man would actually understand me in the first place, so it seemed more like mandated pleasantries than anything. 

There wasn’t all that much time to consider the sense of greeting each other without knowing the language, but that didn’t seem as much of a problem when hunger started worming its way to the front. It was a deep, aching hunger that hit my stomach like a hammer. It hit only harder when the scent of food--sweet and thick--wafted in my nose. If there was doubt before that he was cooking something wonderful behind that wall partition, it was surely gone then.

I approached the half-wall overlooking the kitchen carefully, bare feet on hardwood.

“....Are you making food?” I wasn’t sure if he realized that I was hungry, because I surely didn’t know the last time that I’d eaten. For all I know, I hadn’t eaten in days; that’s certainly what it felt like to me, one hand clutching uselessly at my stomach while I tried to peer over the counter and see what my new guardian was preparing.

Hanzo glanced up to me again at the approach, gauging my indecipherable words and expression with a look in his eyes I was getting far too familiar with already. It looked like a soft glare, searching for an answer he didn’t have but knew he could get--but I don’t see how staring me down would shed any light on the barrier between us.

“...ハングリー?” he asked slowly, one hand making a motion and raising to his mouth, as if popping something between his lips and chewing it. It took me a moment to connect the motion with the oddly-english sounding word (hanguri? hungry?).

“Yes!” I exclaimed, pointing at my belly, and then towards my mouth in what was hopefully the most obvious response I could give. Though the vague hand gestures made me feel more like a child than anything else, I was too hungry to care. After a moment more of frantic pointing and excited nodding when I felt somewhat confident that he understood, I stepped closer to the counter and peered down at what he was making.

The stove was on the other side of the short wall, and a single pot sat on one of the burners. I could see a thick-looking liquid inside of it’s dark, cast-iron walls, but I didn’t know what the oatmeal-like food was. I hummed and leaned my chin on the top of the wall partition. 

I pointing a finger down to the pot. 

“What’s that?” came my verbal question, despite knowing we would only understand the physical motions from one another instead of words. When he didn’t answer I became quiet, feeling a little dumb for even asking in the first place. I figured that he simply hadn’t heard me or hadn’t cared to try answering, but was proven wrong when he pressed a small bowl of the unknown food towards me. 

“おかゆ. それはあなたの腹を記入します.” The man’s voice was gentle, but I couldn’t put past the slight tone of parental warmth that tinged the ends of his foreign words. Whatever it was, it was still food; I was plenty hungry to try anything at that point. I took the bowl in one hand and accepted the spoon-like utensil he handed me, then awkwardly stepped over to the low table that was in the center of the adjoined room. 

There were soft-looking, low seats on the long side of the table, but I happily took the shorter side, sitting on my knees and gently settling the bowl and spoon on the wood. I could hear Hanzo still moving around in the kitchen, and figured that it was probably alright to start eating since he was busy. 

There wasn’t much of a scent to the white gruel, and when I cautiously brought the flat spoon to my lips to have a taste, I found there really wasn’t much of a flavour to it either. It wasn’t bad, so to speak, but it was a bit odd--I could identify rice at the very least, and finally figured out what it was: rice gruel. Though not the most kind of ways to name it, it was still food and I didn’t mind taking a few bites more when my belly was quite happy with being filled at least.

Hanzo stepped out of the kitchen a few moments later, turning his gaze to me as I ate.

I felt my stomach drop a bit when he looked absolutely scandalized. Knowing absolutely nothing about having done something wrong, I drop both bowl and spoon back to the table, tensing up as he approached and finally knelt by the table on the other side of me.

He gave me a look, a hard one, and gently shook his head at me and pointed to my food.

I was left for a moment in mild confusion when the man finally opened his mouth to speak.

“あなたわ無知な,” he said, soft enough that it sounded more like a self-reminder than something for me to hear. He lifted his voice a little louder and slowly pressed his hands together in what looked like a prayer. “いただきます.” 

I watched him for a moment, not understanding. He did the motion again, repeated the word a little slower for me to understand, and then it hit me; he was repeating the word and motion for me to do.

I suddenly felt a flush over my cheeks as I pressed my palms together, mimicking the motion he was showing me, and spoke. “Itadek--Itadeku….”

“いただきます,” He repeated again, even slower. I tried again, probably sounding rather stupid, but eventually managing to string together the right syllables well enough that he seemed happy with the sound. “あなたは最終的にそれのコツを取得します.”

The next couple minutes were spent in mild silence as the two of us focused on our food, with only the gentle sound of the spoons clicking against the sides of the bowls otherwise pittering the air with noise. It wasn’t entirely awkward, the situation, but it felt plenty so whenever I lifted my eyes up from my food to watch the man across the table. The first couple times, his attention was down at his food, gently eyeing up the bowl in his own mind of thoughts. 

It was easy to note a few things about the man since I was so close. 

His brother Genji had looked young, but it was hard to gauge Hanzo’s age. Though he seemed young at first glance with his gentle expressions and bright-looking eyes, I noted the soft streaks of grey on his temples, just subtle enough among the dark raven hair that it took a few moments to too-observant looking to even notice. 

The light flecks of color could have simply been from stress from working. For lack of a better word if there was any, I didn’t suppose that working as a high-end prostitute came with it’s own sources of aggravation. Or perhaps it was FOR his job? Again, it wasn’t as if I had much knowledge or education when it came to being a classy sex-worker, so for all I knew it could have been something he did to appease customers.

It did look rather nice on him, honestly.

I wished there was a way to ask him about it, to bar away the linguistic difference just so I could learn a little more about him, if only so I didn’t feel so awkward in accepting his unending, almost parental kindness.

I was somewhere in the middle of my thoughts when he finally flicked his gaze up to meet mine, as if he felt me watching him entire time and finally felt curious enough to see for himself if that was true.

I let out some sort of garbled noise of embarrassment, less of any coherent word and more of a gasp or cough to hide my discomposure of the moment. My eyes were glued to the bowl from then on, trying almost to count the pieces of mashed rice as if it was a rather important piece of information that I needed to note for later. Regardless of how he took my staring, the man said nothing. I heard the sound of a spoon clinking against a bowl from the other side of the table and I, silently, let out a breath of relief.

I don’t know how long the two of us sat like that, eating without speaking, but by the time I was nearly finished with everything in the bowl he was already finished and shifting to stand up. He collected his own dish, and then stepped over to me. Assuming that he meant to take the dish, I gently put the spoon inside and gently handed it up to him.

Hanzo cast me a curious look again, though it was firm enough that I could figure what his issue was with relative ease.

“[I barely gave you any],” He said, pointing at my bowl and then to myself. “[Eat the rest of it first].” He motioned with the spoon in his own bowl, pulling it up to take an imaginary bite before pointing, again, to me and my food.

Ah. Well, it wasn’t as if I could say that Hanzo didn’t care about my health, or perhaps was he just a stickler for finishing everything? Regardless, I finished what was left in the bowl with no shortage of embarrassment tinting my cheeks, then hurrying into the kitchen to give him the very empty bowl and escape before he had anything else to say of the matter. 

While he was busied in the kitchen, I quietly decided to remain in the living room, sitting politely next to the table with my knees tucked beneath me, unsure what to do with my hands than fiddle with my fingers. There wasn’t any desire to return to the bedroom, and...well, what else was there to do but wait until Hanzo escorted me out and back to the brothel?

There was an abrupt end to the sound of dishes in the kitchen. Curiosity stilled my bored thoughts and turned my eyes to see why, and I saw him over the partition, meeting my gaze. 

I blinked at him.

He continued to stare for a few seconds more before moving his gaze to something above me. I turned to see what it was Hanzo seemed interested in on the wall and--Oh, a television. I’m not quite sure how I missed that one. It was a fair sized screen, but definitely big enough that one could figure Hanzo was, at the very least, a well-off man. I stared at the blank screen for a time before it suddenly erupted with light and sound, making me jump and let out a little noise of surprise.

Hanzo chuckled behind me. I turned my head again and found him still in the kitchen, a remote in his hand as he leaned over one of the counters overlooking the living room. Even without words, his amusement was more than clear in how he glanced at me before returning to whatever he had been before.

At least the air wasn’t so silent anymore, which was rather nice. A lot less awkward to sit alone and confused when there wasn’t so much silence stifling the air. Whatever Hanzo had turned the television onto was, of course, in Japanese. I had little hope if any to understand what was going on outside of the visual cues, but it was nice to have something specific to throw my attention to than stare stupidly down at the table or my fiddling fingers.

It looked to be some sort of news station. A woman sat as the featured subject of the screen, at a desk and looking as professional as any other news anchor might. There were boxes of text around her, and what I assumed was the time down in the corner of the screen. Outside of the numbers ticking in the corner, the rest of the screen was foreign.

“最近の報告は確認されていません,” the woman said, peering down at the papers in her hand for a moment as if to double check the words. “しかし実行可能な証拠の不足のために、警察は数週間前誘拐の後ろに任意グループの確認することはできません。.” 

There was a solemn look on her face, not blank, but a sort of calm that I figured she earned through years of reporting. A few pictures flickered over the screen after a moment, but they were merely signs of words I couldn’t read, or footage of people that had absolutely no context. Police officers, a couple people speaking at a podium--

The channel changed after another moment, and I didn’t bother to run my head to see if Hanzo was the one who changed the channel at that point. Cartoons of some sort took up the screen and, while I still couldn’t understand a single word, it was a lot more interesting than monotonous news. If I could understand what she had been saying, it still would have been boring.

I couldn’t make all that much sense of what was going on, but at least it was colorful. Bright characters, emphasized jokes, and a fervent lack of explanation for why the main character had bright ocean-blue hair. It was rather peaceful regardless, I simply put together my own attempt at a background in place of what I couldn’t pick up (which was a lot to begin with).

By the end of the episode Hanzo seemed finished with his task, and he stepped out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

“Time to go?” I said with a smile, anxious to finally leave the apartment and return to the brothel, where Genji was probably already getting some information for me. Hope bubbled up in my belly at the prospect of having some answers to the dozens of questions plaguing my situation, but Hanzo waved me to sit back down when I started to stand up.

“あなたがここに滞在必要があります,” he said, explanation lost in the foreign language. He pointed down, at the ground, and then set the remote control on the table beside me. “私は今日数時間働きます.”

My brows pulled together as I tried to stand up again, he only pressing my shoulder so I sat again.

“Do you have something else to do before we leave?” A show was made of my confusion, head tilt emphasized as I pointed from him, to me, and then finally towards the front door. “Leave? Like, going to the brothel to see Genji?” Maybe the name would help the information click. “Genji help.”

I stared at the man, and he stared back, both of us locked in a moment of confusion to make the other understand what we were trying to say.

Eventually the silence hung a little too long. Hanzo took in a breath, peered around him a moment, and then stepped over to the computer desk on the far side of the living room. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from one of the drawers, and then returned to me, kneeling down close enough to I could see what he was drawing on the blank sheet.

After a moment of messy doodling, I could see that Hanzo had drawn a clock. There weren’t any minute or hour hands on it, but the numbers were universal enough that I was starting to get an idea of what he might be explaining.

“私は11で作業を開始します,” Hanzo murmured, circling the 11 on the clock. “...私は別のシーンを今日起こしたくありません.“ He then made an obvious line, a curve moving through the other numbers until he reached the 4 and then circled it just as obviously as the first number. Beneath the two connected numbers, he started doodling a square, then added a handle and a few silly scribbles of details. 

Ah, it was a briefcase. 

If I didn’t already figure he was going for symbolism, the picture would have confused me more, but it came across surprisingly clear.

“You work from 11 to 4….” I began, pointing from the first to the second number, and then to the briefcase.

“Yes,” The man agreed, as if I used a word in English he seemed to understand but had forgotten. “Work.” He pointed to the numbers again.

I glanced up towards the wall, and in the space next to the television was a clock; it read a bit past 10. Upon the return of my gaze to Hanzo again, he was standing up, adjusting his clothes and looking down as if waiting for me to try standing again.

My eyes narrowed a bit at the unspoken, probably unconscious challenge.

“I’m not staying here alone for five hours,” anyone could have probably hear the mild annoyance in my voice when I did just that, I stood up and let out a huff in the man’s direction. “Do you honestly expect me to watch TV for that long?”

Well. If I could have understood it, maybe it would have been a slightly different story. When there were answers out there to how I came to be in Japan and not remember anything beforehand, I was going to figure them out regardless of whatever Hanzo’s reason was to keep me in place.

“いいえ,” He said simply, pointing a finger back down. 

“I’m going with you,” I argued pointedly. “You can’t stop me, I kinda know how to get back to the building.” I made a point of my rebellion by stepping around the man and finding my shoes--the same ones from yesterday, even though they were a little worn and worse for wear. Hanzo must have removed them after I fell asleep. I felt appreciation for the gesture even as I was yanking them on my feet, ignoring his grumbling. 

There was a moment or two of expectation that Hanzo might try to stop me, but he never did. I watched as he carefully slipped on his shoes and then waited for me, his eyes more curious than disapproving

He looked really nice like that.

I stood up a few seconds later, shoes on and mostly ready to start the day in public. My hair felt alright, my clothes looked fairly acceptable, good enough to get through another day. My lips widened with a smile in Hanzo’s direction and I waited for him to lead the way, 

He didn’t return the smile, but there was a defined softness in his hazel gaze as he opened the front door and lead the two of us out of the apartment.

I really hoped that Genji had a few answers for me.


End file.
